30 September 2012

If
you enjoy a good mystery then you need look no further than Robert Goddard’s,
Blood Count. As with all Goddard’s books,
it’s filled to the brim with mystery and mayhem, taking the reader on an edge
of the seat ride.

Set
in London, The Hague, Italy, Switzerland and Belgrade, Blood Count is the story
of Edward Hammond, a surgeon, who 13 years earlier, received a huge sum of
money for secretly performing a life saving operation on a Serbian gangster by
the name of Dragan Gazi. Little did
Edward know what consequences his actions would eventually wreak on his life. Ripped from his comfortable life in London he is hurled into a world of murder and corruption.
Who can he trust?,

I’ve
reader almost all Robert Goddard’s books and this one does not disappoint.

17 September 2012

Yesterday
I wrote a post from this bench on the side of the hill with that kangaroo looking at me and the only sound that
of the birds, and the breeze
blowing through the trees.Today, I’m
35,000 feet in the air travelling south.Squashed into my seat like a sardine with engine noise, crying babies
and chatter from my fellow passengers.How
things can change in a space of 24 hours.The scenery outside in the cloudless sky is quite spectacular from my
vantage point, but as I prefer to keep my feet on the ground, I choose not to
look.

Nevertheless,
in this age of technology, when one has to leave the comfort and convenience of
one’s study, or one's bench on the side of a hill, one can virtually take one’s study with one! Laptop computer, external hard drive, pocket
wifi device, iPad, iPhone, and for entertainment when one takes a break from
writing, an iPod for music, and a Kindle for reading!

Voila! Home away from home. What could be better?

But
there is a problem here. All this
technology takes up space. And it’s
heavy to carry around. Not to mention the
fact that it ALL needs to be recharged.
This last point means that one has to fill one’s suitcase with an array
of wires, plugs and earphones. Have you
ever got to your destination and found that these wires have entertained themselves during the flight by entwining?
Great for them, but it means that I have to spend hours unraveling
them. Have you ever tried to extract
just ONE wire from the rest? Forget it.

But
there’s more! When I take a look in my
suitcase, where are my shoes and that extra sweater and pair of jeans? Oh, that’s right, I couldn’t fit them in. So here I am with all my bells and whistles
but not enough clothes and shoes to wear,
Never mind. I have my laptop, my
external hard drive, my iPad, my iPhone, my iPod, my Kindle, so all’s well with
the world!!!

12 September 2012

To recap on, To Paint A Picture With Words so far, when writing a story,
your words take your readers on a journey into the world you have created. Not unlike a painter who engages the viewer
with the subject of the painting with colour, style and the medium in
which it’s painted. To engage our readers when writing, we use engaging characters, settings, plot, structure, theme, conflict, and the all important five senses (smell, taste, sound, touch, sight).

In Part 5 we’re going
to talk about Structure. So, what is structure? Put simply, structure helps to
organise and shape your story. And although there are probably many ways to accomplish this, the method I prefer is the three acts.

Act One
(the beginning)

Introduce your
characters, their relationships, and the settings.

Establish the conflict
- that is, the situation that drives the main character to act

Act Two (The
middle)

The story develops

Complications and
obstacles arise

The main character
tries and fails and tries again

Tension grows until it reaches a climax

Act Three (The end)

Resolution of the
climax

All loose ends are
resolved

When writing a full
length novel I find this method is helpful because it divides my story into
three sections. I know that in this
first act, I have to introduce all my characters. I may not have them all appear in a scene,
but they will be mentioned so that the reader knows they exist in my
story. I also try to have all my
characters introduced in the first 20-25 pages.
By the end of the first act the conflict should be established.

Act Two is by far the
longest because it encapsulates all the complications and obstacles that
the main character is confronted with in his or her quest. So, it’s important to keep tensions coming
and being resolved and in so doing, keeping your reader interested in the
story. Tension gradually rises toward the end of Act Two till you reach the climax.

Act Three, of course,
is similar in length to Act One because it resolves all issues and lets the
reader know what happens to all the characters.

5 September 2012

So far in this series,
we’ve looked at character,settings and plot.
Today we’re going to talk about the theme of your story.

We write stories to
entertain our readers, giving them an escape from their day to day lives. But running along beneath the story’s surface
is its theme. In other words, the deeper
meaning of the story.

Here are a few
examples of theme.

Moby Dick is an adventure about a sailor called Ishmael, a ship’s captain by the
name of Ahab and Moby Dick, a whale.
Ahab, after having his leg bitten off by Moby Dick vows to kill the
whale. That is the plot. But beneath this story’s surface there is a
theme. In fact, there are several. They are class, social status, good and evil
and the characters pondering upon their beliefs.

Hamlet is a story of duals, murders and love.
It’s themes are revenge, moral corruption and tragedy.

Robinson Crusoe is about a man who becomes marooned on a desert
island. That is the plot, but it’s theme
is the strength of the human spirit.

Rather than be
contrived, a theme should evolve through the characters thoughts, the dialogue
and transmitted by way of the settings.

If you’re writing a book,
ask yourself what its theme is. So the
next time you are asked what your story is about you’ll not only be able to
give a general rendition about the plot, but also the whys and wherefores of
your story.

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About Me

Mystery writer and author of The Celtic Dagger, Murder At The Rocks,Once Upon A Lie, Lane's End, Deadly Investment, Poisoned Palette and The Fourth String, all part of the Fitzjohn Mystery Series.I live in Australia, am an avid reader, love the theatre, travelling, photography and delving into my family's genealogy.